Yesterday after I went to my Cardiac rehab and asked a lot of questions and broke all records for speed in a six minute walking test I went to pick up the 500 business cards I ordered at the UMD print shop. On my way in I passed a typical college table in the Kirby center about politics. It asked are you for or against abortion prohibition. I knew I would give the people standing next to it the first of my business cards.
While picking up the cards I regaled the folks behind the counter with the story of my Valentine’s Day heart attack. They told me I should begin any explanation of the business card with that hard to believe story. Then I turned around with only 12 minutes on my parking meter to race to my car. I’d already spent more time at rehab than I’d expected and wanted to get home. I did stop at the table and handed a card to someone and said I was for the pro choice side. I turned on my heal to get to my car when I heard a voice ask me why. It was Cora.
I began to understand that the table was jointly managed by different sides of the issue and that impressed the Hell out of me. Only someone disagreeing with me was likely to ask for my thinking and I gave a thumbnail sketch of my thinking. I mentioned to they young woman that had spent fifty years thinking about the issue. She asked challenging questions and I was thrilled. An honest-to-God-conversation. She really wanted to know why I thought the way I did. I obliged her with verse if not full chapters. I apologized explaining that I had written more fully on some points and asked if I could send her one of my columns in the Reader that explained my frustration with the Republican party. She agreed and typed her email in so I could send her this old column. Our conversations continued along the lines of when life started; my sense that the justices in the original Roe V Wade case made a very judicious decision with the three trimesters; my fear that the 19 tightly controlled Republican states are about to resume the era of back alley abortions; my concession that life has changed over fifty years from abject shame to a lot of single mothers living without shame if also without much government help.
She acknowledged my point of view and I commended her for working with her opposition. The issue of the Republican pro-life party’s apparent indifference to poor babies came up and she heartily agreed with me. I told her that if she represented new thinking about abortion that her concession would be very helpful in making a better world. Again I asked if I could send her something I had written about abortion and again she consented. I sent her this.
There may or may not be any hope for the future of the Republican party but if Cora represents the new face of the pro-life community there is hope for America.
